Lost Hope
by Dayja
Summary: Legolas awakens in pain and alone, to find himself left for dead on a battlefield. His friend has been taken. Legolas must get him back. But can he, wounded as he is, with a severe wound done to his very soul? Warning: torture and rape
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer** : I do not own/am not associated with/make no money from Lord of the Rings.

 **Warning:** This story goes rather dark, including violence, torture, and semi-graphic rape (as in, the event is not described in extreme detail but neither is it 'off-screen', and the after effects to an elf's soul might be distressing).

Also warnings for evil cliffhanger. Seriously. You might want to wait for chapter 2 to read it.

 **The Story**

He awoke and wished he hadn't.

It hurt, worse than the time he had endured three spider bites and a broken arm. Worse than the beating he had endured during a brief captivity among orcs, before arrows had rained down and brought death and ruin and rescue. Worse than the flogging given by a scared and distrustful group of men who thought him an evil enchanter just for his pointed ears and immortal youth that made him different than they. Death had not come to them because he had stayed Estel's hand.

Legolas hurt, as though his entire body had been hacked to pieces and left to rot. It was an agony so intense and entire that if he had been able to scream, he would have been. He couldn't scream, though, because his throat seemed to have no voice left in it. The pain was too great to even accurately know what had been done to his body to cause it. Had he been beaten? Had he been stabbed? Had he been sat upon by an oliphant?

How long he lay there in his pain, he did not know, but in all that time, nothing else happened. There were no voices. Not friends who came to ease his suffering and heal. Not foes to bring him more tortures. Slowly, too slowly, he became aware of the world beyond the pain. He was outside, beneath the sun, lying on stones and pine needles and brown and withered leaves. His body felt twisted, unnaturally so, and the sunlight somehow brought only coldness to his skin. The world around him stank, of blood and death and that particular horrid odor that only one race processed: orcs. There were orcs about.

And the part of his brain that wasn't screaming for relief from the waking world, actually laughed a bit to itself. Of course it was orcs, what else loved to cause elves such pain as he now endured.

They were very quiet orcs, though. In his experience, orcs were incapable of silence.

Legolas opened his eyes; only in that moment realizing they were closed and that he had been relying entirely on his other senses to detect the world around him.

The sun was too bright and the world somehow didn't come into focus as it should, but nonetheless he could see enough. This wasn't some orc camp or town. This was a battlefield.

Black blood splattered nearby rocks and trees, bodies lay headless and armless and dead, some still stabbed through with elven arrows, one impaled on what was doubtless its own weapon.

The act of tilting his head, coupled with forcing his eyes to focus, sent a new wave of agony rippling through his body and stabbing into his brain and a sudden sensation of nauseous vertigo swept through him, almost enough to send him spiraling back into the darkness he had just crawled out of. He pushed through it anyway, forcing eyes to see, forcing his head to move, and it was only when he failed to find what he was searching for and a sick, horrified relief swept over him that he knew why he was doing it.

He didn't remember what had happened. No, he did remember. The memories were there, but as though on the other side of a wall, waiting for when he was ready. He didn't remember, but somehow he knew all the same, that he hadn't been alone when the orcs came.

He was alone now. Only dead orcs surrounded him.

He didn't remember, but he knew that there had been many more orcs than those lying dead here. The orcs had come, they had battled, and the orcs had left, leaving the dead behind.

They had left an elf on the battlefield with the dead. Had they thought him dead? Did his friend think him dead? It was no longer relief that swamped him, but horror. His friend must be alive, but in the hands of those who would make every moment of life an agony and torture from which death would have been a kindness.

Legolas couldn't lie here among the dead while his friend suffered. He must get up.

He couldn't get up.

Now that he had assessed the world and assessed what had happened, it was time to assess himself, beyond the knowledge that he hurt and that those hurts were unrelenting and tortuous.

He closed his eyes again, thought of his friend going through this same agony, only perhaps worse, and forced the darkness back that threatened to draw him down into the folds of oblivion. That way would doubtless lie true death, and then who would save his friend?

Everything hurt, but he had to start somewhere, so he started at his head. His head pounded sharply, perhaps from blunt trauma but perhaps simply from a headache. No doubt he had lost blood and that could account for head pains as easily as concussions. Normally, he'd have run a hand over his own head to test for damage, but he hadn't checked his arms or hands for damage themselves and from sharp and throbbing pains in both, he instinctively felt it a bad idea to move them. One ear felt more painful than the other, and he could feel blood on his face and in his mouth and in his hair. He didn't know if it was his own or orc blood.

Neck was next. His throat was raw. Perhaps he had been strangled? Or perhaps he had been screaming and screaming and…

His shoulders next. Painful, but not broken. Bruised, doubtless, and there was a wound that bled. He felt too out of it to determine if it was a superficial cut or a stab wound or…

 _words, words that hurt, laughing and sneering and tongues that lapped at his blood and teeth, tearing…_

…or he didn't know what. What he was sure of was that his right arm had been wrenched from its socket, his shoulder dislocated. He could feel the unnatural angle and that alone was enough to make him want to be sick, never mind the accompanying pain. Arms next, then, he decided.

No breaks that he could detect through his senses alone, not the arm bones anyway, just more cuts and bruises and…

 _he writhed, trying to yank his arms free but there were too many, they surrounded him in a thick mass, his strength failed against theirs, hands crushing his wrists into the earth, knives, teeth…_

…and his wrists felt swollen and crushed but not broken, he didn't think, nor his fingers, and that was good because he needed those. He needed them to have the strength to hold his weapons for when he went after his friend.

His torso next, then. He was cut there too. He rather suspected his clothes must be in ribbons and he thought there might be a stab wound in there somewhere, which was bad, chest stab wounds were always bad, but he was an elf and if it hadn't killed him by this point then it probably wasn't, in and of itself, a mortal wound. Or perhaps that was a rib that was stabbing him. He had had broken ribs before and he was inclined to think he had them again. His abdomen felt like one big bruise and there were scrapes up and down his sides, from knives and…

 _claws, raking and gripping and…_

…those weren't all defensive wounds. He had been held down at some point, held down by strong hands and they had toyed with him with their knives. The wounds weren't deep, just painful, and probably not deadly unless poison or infection aided them. His hips…his hips were like his wrists, crushed in an iron grip…

 _he was swarmed by filthy bodies, every inch of him, some holding him, some hurting him, and no matter how he twisted or pulled or screamed they didn't let him go. Their dark words hurt his ears and their filthy hands and teeth and knives tore at his body and they laughed and jeered, eyes filled with sick pleasure and hatred and cruelty and lust…_

…and there was another pain his very immortal soul shied away from, because it was part of the pain in his abdomen, inside him, but it was also outside him, and lower, and between his legs…

Legs. His legs were…like the rest of him. They had been held, and cut and clawed at and gnawed and beaten but…the bones weren't broken. They would hold him up, if he could manage to drag his body to its feet. His feet. Oh. Not quite so lucky as all that, then. One was merely bruised, protected even now by his shoes but the other…the other had a knife…

' _Kick me would you, little elfling, I'll nail your foot to the ground!'_

…a knife still in it, all the way through. That would make walking more difficult. Not impossible of course, but certainly more difficult. So, he had broken ribs, deep crushing bruises at his wrists, his hips, his thighs, skin sliced to ribbons, in places mauled almost to the bone, and a knife in his foot. Also, possibly a head wound, or at least a slice to his ear, a dislocated shoulder, and doubtless significant blood loss. That he wasn't already dead was nothing short of miraculous. Doubtless he had looked dead enough to the orcs or he would have been dragged along to endure more torments. Was that the extent of his injuries? They hurt, how they hurt, but they weren't deadly, maybe, hopefully, nor permanent. In some ways, this was surely one of his better encounters with orcs. After all, he wasn't now surrounded by slain elves. He wasn't burning in the grip of horrific poisons. He was intact.

He was intact, and yet, something was very wrong. Was it his missing friend? Did his hidden memories hide a horrific death before his eyes? Was there something wrong with himself that he was missing?

And then the memories were there, as though he had stepped through a door, and that little bit of wrong threatened to entirely consume him.

 _They had been taken by surprise when the orcs came, and so many of them, far too many to fight and come out victorious. They fought anyway, of course, because there was always hope, and Legolas had faced long odds before and won. For almost an hour they managed to hold their own, but the orcs kept coming and they kept coming, and the new orcs were fresh and ready for battle and they were fatigued and it was only a matter of time before a blade or an arrow broke through one of their guards to ruinous effect. Legolas remembered hearing Estel's cry of pain, he remembered turning, an unpardonable distraction in his concern for his friend, and then a blade slicing and he was on the ground, and they swarmed him and in moments he was defenseless and oh, how orcs hate elves, how they hated this elf who had slain so many of their number and they wanted him to hurt, and they wanted him to scream._

 _They had only beaten him at first, some hands holding him so he couldn't escape, couldn't fight back, while others pummeled and scratched and bit. And then it was clear the battle was over, and Estel was screaming. He was captured too, Legolas could still hear his voice in his ears, screaming his name. Legolas feared for his friend, tried desperately to go to him, but it wasn't Legolas who saved Estel. It was another orc._

" _Do not touch the man," a cruel voice growled, "He is to arrive untouched." There were howls of fury and dismay and sounds of battle as the orc forced those under him to comply with his command. In the interim, the bodies around Legolas cleared enough that he could see them. The orc was huge, even by orc standards. He had hold of Estel who was still alive, still struggling, though wounded. There was blood on his arm and on his face. The battle field stilled once more, the orcs restless in their victory, their bloodlust as yet unsated. One slinking orc sidled up to the larger, eying Estel hungrily, but it was not the man it asked for._

" _And the elf?" its wheezy voice asked, eager and excited and lustful._

" _Kill it."_

 _Estel, who had stilled, waiting and watchful for the first opportunity to strike, erupted into motion once more. His hands were already bound but he twisted and pulled, his eyes wide and desperate and afraid. It wasn't enough. He couldn't get free. Legolas could not help him. He could not help himself. The orc smiled, cruel and hate filled._

" _Kill it slowly."_

 _And the orcs had gathered around and he could see nothing but their cruel and twisted faces, blocking even the stars in the sky._

Legolas remembered screams. Estel screaming his name. Estel begging. Estel screaming insults and promises. His own screams. Knives slicing, tongues licking and…and a wound that to most elves is a mortal wound. Hands on his hips, pulling at his thighs, and a pollution to his body, the orcs' evil filth inside his body, contaminating it beyond enduring. They had tortured him. Beaten him. Raped him.

They had killed him, for all he wasn't yet dead. He must have passed out in the end, passed out and lay as one already gone, because the orcs hadn't finished the job. They had just gone and left Legolas's body behind to succumb.

The elves called it Grief, what happened to an elf who was wounded in such a way as to make him lose the will to live. They called it Fading. Euphemisms, Legolas realized. He had felt grief and sorrow before, deeply and horribly, and this was nothing like that. This was…disgust. Corruption. His own skin felt wrong and dirty and spoiled, and if it were in his power at that moment he would have flung it off him. His fea wasn't fading, it was rejecting this twisted ruined corpse it had been forced to inhabit. He writhed in the dirt, careless of all the agonized pains this worthless body was screaming with, fingernails clawing at skin in a desperate attempt to be free of it.

"Out," his own voice whispered, too empty and hoarse to be screams, "Out, get out!"

Never had Legolas been so in danger of dying in that moment and never had he wished it more that it might be true. His fea could escape and be clean once more. Only one thought stopped his passing. Only one thought could have, in that moment.

Where was Estel?

Still captured. There was not a single chance that the young ranger would willingly have left Legolas to lie there among the orc corpses, his body broken and ruined and dying.

And he was dying, not just because his body was ruined and he needed out of it, but because it had been brutalized and torn and bloodied until he himself had been mistaken for a corpse and left. Was Estel in the same state, only worse? Was he even now being tortured as Legolas had been. 'Untouched' the orc had said. Legolas could only hope that meant unhurt as well.

There was no one else to save Estel. No one else knew he had been taken. No one else was close enough to come to their aid, even had they somehow known. There was only Legolas, a broken elf in a ruined body who was barely clinging to his immortal life.

If all Estel had to save him was a broken elf, then so be it. He would get up, he would follow the orc's path, and he would save his friend. Then he could break.

Step one: stand up.

No, step one: sit up. It was almost more than he could bear; it almost sent him spinning right back into the void. The dislocated shoulder made one half of him completely useless, and the tortured muscles and broken ribs of his abdomen made using them to pull himself up next to impossible. He pushed with his good arm, and by good, that only meant not as bad as the other and still resting in his shoulder socket as it should. His body felt strange, hot and cold at the same time, and the earth spun beneath him.

In the end, he managed to roll himself up and onto his knees, all his weight on his one arm, his head hanging and his hair flowing down to the earth, dirty with blood and dirt and clinging leaves. He stayed there, he didn't know how long, panting, resting his head all the way to the earth to ease his strained muscles, his heart pounding in his ears.

If it weren't for the spear, he may never have made it past that position. It just so happened an orc corpse was lying a few feet away, an orc spear through its heart. Vaguely, Legolas could remember the moment of grabbing it and thrusting it through. One of his knives were already gone at that point, thrown to spare Estel from an attack from behind, and Legolas had started using the enemy's weapons against them. Crawling to the spear was agonizing and slow, slower than an infant's crawl, but in the end his fingers curled around the wooden shaft. With it, he pulled himself upright on his knees.

Getting his feet under him took almost as long, and it was a very close thing. He had never in his life felt so unbalanced, so weak, so…mortal. With every struggle to move, darkness threatened to knock him down, the pain threatened to overpower him.

"Estel," he found himself saying, or mouthing without voice. He didn't stop. He didn't fall. He didn't succumb to sleep or death or pain. "Estel." He stood. On one foot, with one good arm, he stood.

From the position of the sun, it had been mid-morning when he first awoke. It was a little past midday by the time he stood. Orcs liked darkness and hated day. His best chance was to find Estel now, that afternoon, before the sun set.

Impossible odds were against him. There seemed little chance that the orcs had stayed in the area. There seemed little chance that Legolas could walk fast enough to ever catch up to them. There seemed little chance that, having found them, a second encounter would lead to anything other than his true death.

Step 2: follow. He would follow. This journey would be his last, and it would be hard and painful but he would walk it nonetheless.

The spear came with him. He lost a bit of time forcing it free of the orc, a much more difficult task than it should have been. The knife in his own foot he left. He should have drawn it while he was still down; to do so now he'd almost certainly have to sit and he didn't think he'd be able to rise again. It meant his foot was next to useless. He could put his foot down only on the toe, and to do so caused agony so sharp that the first step almost had him passing out. Hopping only worked in the short term, not least because he didn't really have the strength to hold his own leg up.

He limped, trusting his weight to the spear, and he started in the direction the orcs had gone. There, at least, was a bit of luck. They hadn't bothered with stealth in the slightest. Clearly they did not fear pursuit but reveled in slashing at trees and trampling plants and, all in all, leaving a trail even an infant would be able to follow.

Legolas followed. Step by slow, agonizing step he followed. His wounds were untended to and still tortuous, and yet, oddly, it was the pollution to his soul that helped to keep him going. Somehow, everything his body was going through felt distanced from himself, as though the decision to abandon it meant he no longer cared what pains it endured. It hurt, worse than any pain he'd known in all the long years of his life, but the pain wasn't his. The damage to his soul was so much beyond the damage to his body that the lesser almost didn't matter anymore.

And the pain to his soul was eclipsed by the feared grief of losing his friend to darkness and suffering. Legolas was ready to die but not yet. Not yet. He had to go on. And on. And on.

And then the impossible became a reality, because he could hear them. They weren't leagues away and running on. They had set up camp, unwilling to travel unnecessarily in the daylight hours. After all, what was the hurry? They had their prize; he was going nowhere, and they were out in the wilds where any chance of rescue coming was non-existent, even should someone somehow know a rescue was needed. So they had stopped, and gathered in the shade of some pine trees, not being near enough a cave for shelter and so taking what shelter from the sun they could.

It was late afternoon, and the camp was not completely asleep or still, but most of the orcs had taken refuse from the sun in their tents. Even better, Legolas could clearly see Estel and wouldn't have to search him out. He had been tied to a post in the center of the camp, left without cover, though it was wooded enough that he had partial shade from the nearest trees. He sat, his legs straight in front of him and his head bowed and his hands clinched in fists.

He was also guarded by no less than ten orcs, standing in a circle around him, weapons at ready. Other orcs wandered around the camp, tending to fires or roasting foul smelling meats or scrambling for the shade. Not a lot, but enough to make things difficult. It would take but one shout for orcs to wake and pour from the tents in hopeless numbers.

If Legolas had been whole and hale, he might have just managed. He'd use his bow to take out the ten guards, hopefully quick enough they'd never even know they'd been attacked. He'd leap from a tree then, cut Estel's bonds, and together they'd run even as the alarm sounded, too fleet for the slumbering army to easily catch them.

Legolas didn't have his bow, or his arrows. He didn't think he'd even be able to climb a tree if he tried, not even if the tree attempted to help him do it. He couldn't run into the camp.

"Step 3," he whispered hoarsely. "Save Estel."

And he allowed himself to fall to his knees, the spear tumbling from his fingers. He reached down with his good hand, and then, before he could think about what he was about to do, he grasped the hilt of the knife in his foot and yanked.

The primal scream that accompanied the move went unheard, his voice still lost in his throat, and for a moment his entire body went limp, leaving him back on the earth, dark spots dancing behind his eyelids.

Later, how long later he didn't know, just later, he pulled himself upwards once more. Just to his knees. Then he readied himself for what he had to do. Normally, it would be an easy act, a very low chance of failure, but just at that moment, when he felt seconds away from passing out, or perhaps passing beyond the world of the living, when one arm was useless and his vision wavered, his entire body wavered, he couldn't be sure of hitting the mark. And he had to hit the mark. To miss would be disastrous. It could mean Estel's death.

The afternoon was growing late. He was running out of time.

If Estel died by his blade, at least it would be a better fate than what awaited the man when the orcs reached their master.

Legolas breathed in. He breathed out. And his arm moved. The knife in his hand flew. It flew, and the moment it left the elf's hands, Legolas knew he had missed. Or rather, he hadn't. He had aimed just a tad too high. What would have ideally imbedded in the ground just in front of the man was going to pierce his heart.

There was a gasp of shock, a thunk, and then silence. Legolas fell to the earth, utterly spent.

Step 4: break.


	2. Chapter 2

They wanted a ranger. Why, Aragorn did not know, but the orcs had come for him. From what words he had managed to listen to, it was merely chance that Aragorn was the ranger they had chosen. The orcs didn't know their own prize. Isildur's heir didn't know whether to feel relieved or infuriated at the fickleness of fate that had led them unknowingly to him.

They were to take him to their 'master', an unnamed villain who meant to use a ranger, somehow, to strengthen his own evil. Even while taunting Aragorn with their evil intentions, and his assured service to their master from whom he would never escape, they never slipped in giving a name.

They had wanted a ranger and not an elf.

Fury was easier to feel than grief, but the grief was still there, too large even for the rage and hatred that now filled the man's heart. The orcs had been ordered not to touch him, but that didn't stop them from torturing him. They didn't use blades or whips, of course. They didn't need those to cause him more pain than the young ranger had ever experienced in the entirety of his life.

Legolas was dead. And it wasn't quick, and it wasn't painless, and he could still hear the screams. No matter how Aragorn struggled, his strength wasn't enough. No matter how he pleaded or cursed, his words weren't enough. The orcs had brutalized his friend before his eyes and ripped his body and torn his immortal life from his flesh, and Aragorn could do nothing but watch.

One of the filthy little devil's spawn even now stood guard in front of Aragorn with the tip of one of his friend's ears strung on a necklace. They had laughed at his pain and told him how they had enjoyed the elf, how it felt to rip him, how it felt to _use_ him, and when Aragorn responded with curses and fury, they laughed again.

Then the sun had come up and most of them had fled to the relative darkness of their tents, and Aragorn was left alone to his fury and his pain and the cold fear that the orcs would win. They would take him to their master, and their master would use Aragorn, somehow, to bring worse pains to all that was good. After all, if someone such as Legolas could fall, why couldn't he?

No. He couldn't fall. He couldn't because someone had to kill these evil monsters. Someone had to gut them and spear them and make them pay. They were corpses walking who just didn't know they were already dead. He had to kill them.

He had to kill them and he had to go back to Legolas. His friend deserved better than to be left to rot on a battlefield amidst orcs. He couldn't save his friend, but he could do that much. And he could bring word to the elf's father what had become of his son.

The pain was almost too much to bear. Legolas liked to call Aragorn young, but to the man theirs was a long friendship, a friendship cemented both in battle and in fun. They had first met when Aragorn was still simply Estel, foster son to Elrond, fifteen years old and already convinced he was a full grown man. Some fifty years later and Legolas still called him Estel. And there should have been fifty years more, a hundred, the full measure of Aragorn's life. Legolas was immortal. He wasn't meant for death.

So Aragorn knelt, upper arms and chest tied to a post, wrists bound together with thick cords in front of him. His head was bowed and his hands were clinched as fury and grief tore through him and he pictured in his mind's eye all the ways the orcs would die while trying to forget the way Legolas had screamed.

He might have looked half dead himself, slumped and defeated, but he was not. He was biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to present itself.

When it came, it was only long years of battle honed instinct that had him jerking upright, his wrists rising instinctively at the whisper sound of a projectile tumbling through the air. He reacted before he even was aware he needed to react, and so when the knife did hit him, for one long moment he only stared.

There was an orc knife imbedded in the cords that bound his hands. The blade was wet with fresh blood, red blood. That was not orc blood. Aragorn stared, bewildered at this unexpected gift as he tried to figure out what it might mean. An assassination attempt from an orc? Unlikely. He had fallen asleep and now dreamed? Possible. A gift from a friend?

He didn't dare hope. He had always thought hope to be a gift before; he was named for it, after all, but in that moment, hope threatened to undo him. Because if he hoped, and then found that hope to be false…

It would be as though his friend had died a second time. He wouldn't be able to bear it.

Whatever the reason for the knife, the moment of confusion passed quickly. He was a seasoned warrior; he wasn't going to make this gift, wherever it came from, be in vain.

Through some miracle, none of the orcs guarding him had noticed the appearance of the knife. It had come in a gap between two that were both facing the wrong way. Nor had they, through another miracle, recognized the small thunk the knife made as it hit its mark as anything of importance. This was well, for his bonds were thick and even with the blade, it took him a little less than a minute to free himself. Quick though that might sound, if someone had seen the knife arrive he'd have been stopped before he managed to use it.

No one saw. Nor did the orc who still wore Legolas's ear see it coming when the knife thrust itself into its throat.

And if Aragorn wished for more time, to kill more slowly, it was just as well, for the sake of the man's good soul, that he had none. He didn't even pause to kill the rest, he just ran for the trees while the orc he had stabbed was still gurgling and falling to its knees. Aragorn took the ear with him. He didn't know why. It just felt wrong to leave a piece of his friend with the orc who had brutalized him, even if the orc was now dead. Not about to wear such a trophy, even if he hadn't cut the cord to retrieve it as he had, he stuffed it in a pocket as he ran.

His flight wasn't unnoticed, of course, but it was unexpected and sudden, and by the time the remaining orcs turned to see what the noise was their prisoner was already halfway out of the camp. By the time they cried the alarm, he was already among the trees.

Everything in Aragorn's heart screamed at him to run in the direction the knife had flown from, because surely in that direction lay a friend. What friend, he dared not contemplate. Just a friend.

He dared not hope, but he could not help it, all the same. He did not run in the direction the knife had flown from. He ran the opposite way.

If an impossible hope proved itself to be true, running to his friend would have been the worst mistake. Because he had watched Legolas die, and if, somehow, the elf yet lived, then he was in very poor condition. He was in no condition to flee, no condition to fight. If Aragorn had run to him, he would have likely had five seconds of a heart rending reunion before they were again set upon. And this time Legolas would die for sure.

He dared not run to his friend, but he could run away, and lead the orcs away from wherever his friend now hid.

He ran, exhausted and sore, with a nasty wound to one arm and bruising all over, he ran, and the woods rang with the sounds of his pursuit. Up to that moment, his rage had sustained him, even as the pain of his grief had drained him. That pain had turned to the agony of hope, and unlike his grief, it gave wings to his feet, because now, now he didn't have someone to avenge. He had someone to protect.

He ran for hours, until the afternoon sun hung low and the shouts and the clink of metal and the tramping of feet turned into the stillness of the forest. He run until he found a small stream, and then he sated his desperate thirst and took the time to tear a strip from his own shirt to bind his arm. The orc knife, still wet with red blood mixed with black, he gave a quick rinse and wipe. There was nothing else he could do for his wounds, or with the knife. He had no other supplies and no scabbard. Loathe to lose his one weapon, he simply carried it as he ran on again, this time in the stream for a ways. Finally, not leaving the stream, he came to a low, overhanging branch and he took to the trees.

Aragorn might have been raised by elves, but he was not one himself. Legolas, a prince of Mirkwood and half silvan, took to trees more easily than the solid ground, but for Aragorn it was no easy feat to travel the entire length of a forest without stepping foot on the forest's floor.

He didn't have to go all the way in the trees, though. He just had to go far enough. He needed to avoid making a trail that would be found. Because night was falling, and soon the orcs would not be running in a desperate frenzy after their escaped prisoner. They would organize. They'd call out trackers. There were wild wargs about who might even help them to track. And wargs could follow scents. With any luck, they'd follow his scent to that stream and no further.

He really didn't want them to figure out where he was going. That he was, in fact, coming back towards them.

His path in the trees was slow going. He couldn't climb as high as an elf, being heavier, and the trees were far enough apart to sometimes make a passage between them almost impossible even for one as sure footed as Aragorn. He also had only one free hand, the other still holding the knife, and it felt wrong to use an orc knife on the trees even to save his own balance, so he did not use that arm at all. It was the wounded arm, anyway.

Despite all this, he managed almost a mile during that golden hour just before the sun sets. He had never managed so well in the trees in his life. It almost felt as though the trees themselves were lending him aide, though that was unlikely. It wasn't like he was a wood elf that they might befriend. Whatever the reason, whether the kindness of the trees or his own desperation lending him skill, he travelled that mile without any sign of his pursuers.

In the full dark of the night, he dropped to the ground and ran again. It was too dark for that kind of run, but he didn't dare slow. He had to make quite a wide circle to make it back to the orc camp from an unexpected direction, and every hour it took to come back was an hour his friend might be in potential danger.

He stumbled a few times, even fell hard once, and had to bite his own hand to stop himself from screaming when he landed on his hurt arm, though luckily not on the knife it held. He didn't dare scream. Not when he already heard howls in the forest. All the stealth in the world wouldn't help him if they heard him coming.

He should probably look after his wounds, but he had no supplies and he had no time and he had no light. Besides, compared to what had happened to Legolas, he was practically unhurt.

He ran and he ran and it was almost a shock when all that running actually resulted in his destination. The camp was an ant bed of activity, but even so Aragorn could tell that the bulk of the orcs must be out still pursuing him. Certainly, they didn't expect their prey to return right to the place of captivity.

It had taken Aragorn far too long to get back. He had run away from the camp for hours, at least three, and had taken about double that to make his way back with the longer, slower route. If his friend had been there when he left, there was almost no chance that he would be there still. Aragorn could only hope that the elf had both remained hidden from the orcs and managed to leave him some sort of trail so the man could meet up with him again.

He honestly only expected to find faint traces of his friend. A part of him expected traces of another unknown person, the part of him that didn't dare hope because Legolas was dead. None of him expected to creep about the camp to the very spot the knife had come from and find someone still there, almost half a day later in the dark of the night. So when he actually stumbled upon an elf's body, Aragorn actually felt light headed from the shock.

How none of the orcs had stumbled upon him, Aragorn could barely understand for the elf hadn't made a great effort at concealment. In fact, it had to have been because all the orcs had been entirely concentrated upon the opposite side of the camp in the direction Aragorn had run that none had come upon this elf lying on their very doorstep, only partially concealed by a small bush.

If the elf had been clean and filled with the natural glow all elves possess, he would have been spotted from the camp, situated as he was. But the elf was not clean and there was no glow about him. He was bloody and dirty. Even the elf's hair looked dark rather than light as it should have been, so dirty had it become.

Aragorn found the elf and he didn't know whether to be glad or horrified. He couldn't even say with complete certainty that this was Legolas just to look at him. He wasn't sure he wanted it to be Legolas. Because he had been running on a glimmer of hope for hours now that maybe his friend wasn't as dead as he had appeared to be when Aragorn had been dragged away from him to the camp, and if this was Legolas here, and he had been alive, then it looked very much like he might now be dead. He might be dead, and maybe he died while Aragorn was far away, and maybe if Aragorn had made a different choice, maybe Legolas would still be alive. Or at the very least, he wouldn't have died alone, here, surrounded by enemies.

Aragorn considered himself to be a brave man. He willingly sought out monsters and fought them. In all his years, however, he had never found his bravery harder to find than when he had to put his hands upon this broken body and find out if it might still contain life.

It was only when that life was felt, against all odds and appearances, that Aragorn allowed his lost hope to return in full, awful and terrifying though that hope was. The elf was still alive and, this close, the elf was most definitely his friend.

His friend had been tortured and brutalized and injured beyond all endurance, but he had not been killed.

Not yet.

Getting his friend away from the camp and all further detection of the orcs was the first step, and a very difficult task it made, too. Aragorn might manage to sneak right up to the edge of the camp on his own, but sneaking away while carrying his friend would be much harder, and any moment of detection would mean almost certain death, because he'd have to flee while carrying his friend and he'd be slower and he'd not be able to take to the trees. And just to add to the difficulty, his friend was extremely injured, and Aragorn was almost bound to aggravate at least some of his wounds by carrying him. Depending on how he carried him, aggravating a wound could prove deadly. He didn't want to jostle ribs, for instance, or cause a barely clotted wound to bleed. Not only could Legolas not spare any more blood, but a trail of blood would hardly help their escape.

He had to carry him somehow, and he had to move fast. Detection was not the only danger to the elf. If Legolas was still here, it meant he had lain here for half a day, either unconscious the entire time or too injured to make any attempt to move. His injuries must be truly dire, and in desperate need of attention. There was almost no chance, at this point, that infection wouldn't set in but there were things Aragorn could do to hopefully keep his body strong enough to fight them.

That Legolas had received wounds Aragorn couldn't fight against, he chose not to think about. He had found Legolas. Legolas had saved him, somehow, injured beyond belief and left for dead and his friend had still saved him. Now, Aragorn was going to save Legolas. There were no other options.

After a few minutes of hesitation, Aragorn chose to leave the knife behind. There was simply no reasonable way to carry Legolas and keep the weapon. He also decided that, danger to his injuries or no, the only feasible way to carry the elf was over his shoulder. It would help to free his hands and it wouldn't overtax Aragorn's strength if it took a long time to reach safety.

The elf didn't respond in the slightest to Aragorn lifting him, and the man found himself holding onto a swollen wrist, his fingers pressed to the fluttering presence that told him his friend's heart still beat.

Thanks in part to the darkness of night and the general inattention of the orcs in the camp, considering they had no expectation of their prisoner or the elf they thought killed appearing nearby, Aragorn was slightly amazed to discover their escape was actually being made. No cries of alarm followed them. No arrows rained down upon them. Aragorn walked, because he didn't dare run with such an important prize as hung off his shoulder, and the dark forest swallowed them up.

He knew in his heart that Legolas had almost no chance of recovering from this, and that if he were to recover, he needed immediate attention, but he also didn't dare to stop, not with the orcs still so close. Besides, he still had no supplies, not so much as a clean cloth or some water. What good would it do to look at his friend, observes his hurts, and then be able to do nothing to heal them?

Elves are strong, he told himself as he walked. Experience told him that if a wound didn't kill outright, an elf usually survived it. Exceptions were poison and wounds to an elf's soul. Soul wounds might not appear mortal, but they could leach away at an elf's strength, at its very being, until there was nothing left.

Aragorn had seen what the orcs had done to Legolas. He was not ignorant of the very fatal hurt inflicted upon his friend. But he was his friend, and he was alive and Aragorn couldn't think that that might change soon. He was a healer. Legolas was strong. He had the brightest heart Aragorn knew. There had to be a way to cure him, every wound, every hurt.

He had his miracle and the friend he watched die was still alive. Aragorn wasn't going to watch him die again.

It was dawn when Aragorn finally stopped. In all that time, there had been no sound of pursuit. The man was beyond exhausted, between the labor and the now two nights without sleep, but he couldn't succumb to exhaustion now. Not yet.

All the time Aragorn had walked, Legolas had not stirred. If it weren't for the flutter of life beneath his fingers, the man would think he bore his friend's corpse. Sometimes in the long night, Aragorn had actually found himself wondering if he hadn't gone a bit mad, and that Legolas was dead and it was only a sort of physical hallucination that told him otherwise, because he his heart couldn't bear the truth.

No. Legolas was alive still. Corpses don't bleed.

In the cold morning light, Aragorn lay his friend on a bed of leaves and finally got a good look at all that ailed him. It was even worse than it had looked in the shadows.

Aragorn didn't let himself look at Legolas as a whole, because if he did he'd be lost in memories of screams and helplessness and he'd be overcome by murderous urges to backtrack and kill every last orc in the entire camp with his bare hands. Instead, he looked as a healer, finding the first things to take care of and working from there.

He started with the ribs, because there was a great danger of a broken rib turning into deadly shrapnel. The lack of supplies hindered him of course. He couldn't even use clothes for bandages; Legolas's clothes were almost completely gone, and what was left was strips of ribbon only still on his body because they'd become imbedded in his wounds, while his own clothes had already been torn to bind his own arm and what wasn't torn was filthy and likely to do as much damage as good. Besides, his clothes were elven made, and those didn't tear easily. He missed the orc knife.

Legolas's ribs proved to be better than Aragorn had expected. They should be bound, but they didn't seem likely to stab into his lungs or heart in the near future. The dislocated shoulder was another obvious hurt he could attempt to actually remedy, but it had been out of socket for so long by this point that it turned out to be impossible to force back. For once, Aragorn was thankful that the elf was so deeply out of it, because he made three attempts and had Legolas been awake for that, well, it didn't bear thinking about.

The bloody wounds, Aragorn was helpless to attend to, but at least the fabled elven healing had worked somewhat and most of the shallow cuts were scabbed over. The bite marks were mostly scabbed over as well, though the larger ones were still vile to look at and quick to bleed at anew at the slightest provocation.

The knife wound to his foot was also slow to start healing. As was the half of his ear that remained.

Altogether, Legolas was a mess of bruises and bloody wounds and broken bones, though not as many of the last as Aragorn had feared. He suspected a broken collarbone where an orc had gnawed on the elf, and possibly broken bones at his wrists, the swelling too much for him to make certain, but other than that it was just cracked ribs.

Legolas still did not stir, not during the long and intimate examination and not when Aragorn made what attempts he could at promoting healing with what few medicinal herbs he could find around their location. Unfortunately, their location was not big in medicinal herbs. Some athelas would have come in handy, but there was no chance of finding that where they were.

The end of all his examination and the only real conclusion Aragorn could draw was that Legolas needed to be taken to a proper healer, preferably someone like Elrond. Except Elrond was in Imladris and they were in the wilds far from even a helpful village. Legolas would never make the journey all the way to Imladris, even if they had supplies and horses to hasten the journey.

They had no horses. They had no supplies. And he could almost feel Legolas's life fading with each passing moment. Aragorn couldn't so much as clean the dirt and blood off his friend. How was he meant to heal him?

Exhausted, in body and in spirit, Aragorn did the only thing he could think to do. He held his friend and he sang to him one of Elrond's healing chants. Of course, Aragorn wasn't Elrond, he wasn't even an elf, and so the healing chant was surely just a gentle song from his lips.

He knew, as he did so, that it was hopeless. Never had Aragorn felt his foster father's name more false then in that moment. Aragorn had no hope so how was he to bring hope? But without hope, without a glimmer of a chance, he still held his friend and sunk into a sort of trance, exhaustion dragging him down but he was unable to succumb while his friend lay dying in his arms. So he chanted softly, and his mind wandered into the realm of sleep but his chant did not end.

He could not have said how long they lay like this, except that the passage of the sun told him it was approaching evening when Aragorn was startled from this sleeping trance. He knew why he had awoken immediately, however.

Legolas had stirred.

The body in his arms shivered, the head turned towards his chest, and the very faintest of noises came from the elf's abused throat.

Legolas was the first thing Aragorn became aware of, and the fact that the elf yet drew breath and finally seemed to have some small awareness of the world filled the man with an emotion almost too complex to name, some combination of relief and fear and hope and sorrow that threatened to undo him.

The second thing Aragorn noticed would have had him drawing a weapon in a moment, if he had had one to draw. They were not alone.

"Ah," said their visitor, his voice somehow grave and pleased at the same moment, "You awaken from your trance. That is good."

"Gandalf?!" Aragorn replied, slowly relaxing his fists as he stared at this unexpected apparition and waited for his heartbeat to return to normal. They were in the middle of nowhere, far from civilization and there were none who knew to look for them, and now a wizard just happened to come upon them? Aragorn's exhaustion had surely caught up to him. He had to be hallucinating.

"I am not a hallucination, Aragorn, son of Arathorn. I was sent here, alas, too late to prevent your wounds but not, perhaps, too late to aid you both."

And that was when Aragorn heard the soft nicker of horses.


	3. Chapter 3

Legolas did not know where he was. He no longer seemed to be in his ruined body, but neither was he dead, unless the elves had been lied to the entirety of their lives as to what happened when their bodies failed them and their fea fled.

As best he could tell, he had been walking in a sort of forest. At least, it was dark, but there was no feel of stone, and he could feel life surrounding him as he would in a forest. He thought there were birds as well, strange birds that swam in the air as fish, but they couldn't be that, because then Legolas would be underwater and he felt dry and earthbound and breathed in air.

It was dark, and in the distance there was a light, and in the light there were voices singing. They were voices of elves. He even thought he might recognize at least one of the voices, though he couldn't say why.

Perhaps he was underwater. Perhaps all souls passed on this way on their journey across the sea to the Western shores. He should leave this dark forest and go to his kin, and yet, some sense of foreboding bade him wait. He turned, instead, to see what lay behind. There was no light in that direction. He could see his own footprints upon the ground, only a short ways, and then the darkness swallowed them. He was alone, wherever he was.

The singing called to him, and he felt almost certain that the light was his destination, and that if he turned aside and chose another way he could lose it, perhaps forever, and his soul would be lost in this darkness and never know peace. The very idea should have frozen him to the bone in terror, and yet, he still took no more steps towards the light.

He was alone, and he remembered journeying with a friend. Estel had been there, and now he was not. Was the human lost in the darkness? Perhaps, being a man and not an elf, he could not hear the elves or see the light to guide him home. Or perhaps men took a different journey? Or perhaps Estel had never been there and Legolas only thought he was.

Legolas was lost and Estel was lost, and Legolas could not bear the thought of going on and leaving his friend alone in the dark. At the same time, the elf dared not set out in search of him, terrified that his own tenuous link to the Halls of Mandos would fade to nothing if he left the path. He did not go on, and he did not go back. He waited. The longer he waited, the brighter the light shown and the louder the song.

So loud had the light's song grown, that when the second song came he almost didn't hear it at all. It was quiet, a single voice rather than a choir, and far away in another direction. It was so soft and so far away that the only real reason Legolas heard it was because it belonged to someone he had been listening for, straining to hear for an endless age in this timeless darkness.

Estel was singing to him, somewhere from the darkness.

Turning away from the light was difficult, more difficult than simply turning around. It was as though a wind were against him and he had to fight against it, though there was nothing there, nothing that swept at hair or brushed against his skin. He fought, because that was Estel who was lost in the dark, and Legolas had to find him. He could not leave him there alone, not even for his own peace.

The way was dark, and against a current, and the voice was far away and hard to hear. With every step, Legolas felt a tiredness invading him, an exhaustion to be felt in his very bones. Gentle aches changed slowly to sharp pains, the closer to Estel he came and the further from Mandos' Hall. The way towards his friend meant pain and suffering. It meant struggling for every step, and stumbling, while the very air seemed to be pushing on him to turn back.

It would have been so easy to turn back. But Estel was there, lost and alone, and Legolas could not. Would not.

He did not know how long it took him to force himself through the darkness. Ages it felt like. Lifetimes. And at the end of the journey there was a second light. This light held no promise of peace. Almost as though he were looking through a window, or a doorway, he could see the tainted flesh he would return to if he went on. It would not have been more revolting if he had been told he must don the skin of an orc to return to his friend's side. That body there was no longer him; it was the ruined, grotesque remains of an orc's garbage and he did not want it. And there was no true reason he must go back. What would be the point? His body was ruined and it would remain ruined, and if he didn't die now then he would only die later, after further suffering and pain.

The body was not alone. Estel was there, found at last, and calling for Legolas to join him. And Legolas found he could not refuse him. Not when his friend felt such pain, such sorrow. Even if he could only return to him for a short while, Legolas could not deny his friend that while. He stepped into the light and fell into the dark.

All that had happened up to that point had felt sharp and clear, though already the memory of it faded, as though it had been a dream. Now the world was confusing and slow and heavy and painful, a sort of waking dream where he was not quite awake and aware but not quite asleep either and he seemed trapped there, unable to move one direction or the other.

"Hold him for me," said Estel's voice, "I must get his arm in his socket and I'm not strong enough alone."

You're not alone, Legolas wanted to tell him, and then the pain became the entirety of his thought and he receded deeper into the realm of almost dreams. He rose again to less pain than before, and more soothing voices and the clean, sharp scent of healing herbs and potions. Healing words were being chanted.

It's no use, Legolas thought, I'm beyond repair. His thoughts were not words, however, and they did not stop the chants. He could still hear voices, though somehow he couldn't fathom the meaning behind the words, despite hearing them clearly. His thoughts felt muddled beyond all comprehension, and they could have been speaking dwarven for all he could make sense of them.

"It is too late, Aragorn," said a voice, sorrowful and compassionate and familiar. Mithrandir? Had he been with them? "You must let him go."

"I can heal him!" Estel answered sharply, and Legolas might not have made sense of the language but the pain he heard clearly and didn't like it. Why was Mithrandir causing Estel pain?

"He has been raped," said Mithrandir's voice, sad but stern. "You can see his wounds. I watched you stitch them. There's no coming back from this. Let him pass in peace."

"I know what was done to him!" Estel shouted, angry and in pain. "I watched it happen! I watched, and they cut him and they bit him and they killed him and I did nothing, but he came back to life and he saved me and now I will save him! I will save him! There must be a way!"

There is silence, and Legolas wants to reach for Estel, to comfort him and soothe away the pain he heard in his voice, but he could not control his own body.

"Aragorn…" and why was Mithrandir not comforting Estel where Legolas could not? Could the wizard not feel the man's pain? Why such sorrow in his voice when he did nothing to help?

"If we could take away the memory of it," Estel said. "You are a wizard…"

"And that is not in my power," Mithrandir answered. "And even with the memory gone, the wound would still be there, underneath, festering and rotting beneath an illusion of health."

"Wounds heal, given time. Even this one. All we need is time. Perhaps, if I could get him to my father…"

"Even if Lord Elrond had the ability to heal a wound such as this, Legolas would never last the journey."

There was a pause in the voices and then Mithrandir spoke again. His words sounded resigned more than hopeful, but at least there was no longer a sense that he was hurting Estel where he should be helping him.

"We might take him to Isengard. I have no skill in healing this wound, but Saruman the White has more wisdom even than I, and he has a way with words. If there were any who could build a lasting stronghold within a person's very soul to hold off memory and pain, it would be he. And aside from all that, we are currently closer to his home than any other place we could make for."

"Then let us ride. I fear Legolas needs a better bed than these leaves if and a better cleansing of his wounds than I can manage here."

"There's no guarantee he will even last the journey. Isengard is the closed refuge we can seek, but it is still half a day's ride from here."

"Do not tell me how every wound and every mile is against his survival. I already know. As long as he remains alive, we go on."

And then there is movement, and more pain, pain enough to make Legolas want to dive back into the darkness to escape, but he is still lost in that twilight in between and had to endure all. With the pain, however, is a soothing voice, and though Legolas can still feel the ruin of his own body, he is also not past feeling the pure goodness in his friend's hands. Legolas can only hope that his own darkness won't infect his friend, that his taint will not take Estel as well.

Days seemed to pass in this in between, while Legolas neither fell nor rose, and the pain endured but also the comfort and love. Slowly, the darkness was winning, the world fading and becoming less real. The harder Estel grasped him and tried to hold him there, the further Legolas felt himself slipping away.

If he slipped again, there would be no going back. No amount of stubbornness could awaken the dead.

The voices, when they came again, were hushed and agitated, not even words, just sounds. One pleading and insistent and in pain. One sorrowful and resigned. One cautious and powerful and kind. And then, quite suddenly, the last voice spoke clearly and directly to Legolas.

"Come, child. You were gravely injured, but now that is in the past. Step back into the light and join your friends."

And for the first time in what felt like years, Legolas found himself waking up. All the long journey, all the pain, all the darkness, was suddenly like a dream of long ago. He opened his eyes and there was Estel, and Mithrandir, and another man of power who Legolas did not know. The last had been hovering the closest, his hand over Legolas's head, but now he pulled back and stepped away, allowing the other two to crowd in.

Legolas was awake, and no matter how he searched his mind, he could not remember how or why he came to be in this place.

"Legolas?" said Estel, his voice barely a whisper, as though he feared his own words. Legolas frowned.

"Is something the matter, Estel?" he asked. "Are you hurt?" He saw, then, that the man was injured. He had a bandage on his arm, and the skin around it was inflamed, a clear sign of infection.

"I am not," Estel answered, an obvious lie, and Legolas felt his frown deepen. The man finally added, "I was worried because you did not wake up."

"What happened?" Legolas asked. He tried to sit up and was startled to find his body weak. Even that small movement awakened many aches and pains, and he let his head fall back on his pillow rather than continuing the move. What had happened to his body to affect him so? Estel opened his mouth, and then closed it, as though unsure of the answer.

"What do you remember?" Mithrandir asked in his stead. Legolas thought back. It was surprisingly difficult.

"We were on a journey together," Legolas said slowly, fighting now against a growing headache as he forced his memory to piece together all he could. "Scouting…but we had finished and returned to Imladris. We had left Rohan through the gap so as to avoid the need to pass over the mountains and traveled north in the foothills of the Hithaeglir. Then…"

Then there was nothing. They were travelling, they lay down to rest for the night and then Legolas awoke here, ill and injured with Estel staring at him as though it hurt to look at him but it hurt more to look away. Finally, when it was surely clear that Legolas had nothing more to add, Estel came down on one knee before the elf and grasped his hand. Legolas's wrists were bound in white bandages, the elf noted, and it felt strange how he still had no memory of receiving the injury, but Estel's hands were warm and welcome.

"You fell," Estel said, his voice so gentle it almost hurt. "You saved me and you fell. From a cliff into a thorny briar, and each thorn tipped with a poison I have never known. You were gravely injured in the fall; I feared for you."

"Your voice called to me in the darkness," Legolas said, almost not knowing where the words came from, for the event Estel described might as well have happened to a stranger for all his words served to jolt his memory. Legolas could not remember a fall, nor even the darkness that followed, and yet, he remembered Estel singing and calling to him.

"I had lost my healing supplied," Estel explained. "I tried to sing a healing chant, for all the good it would do. I know I am no elf."

"You were lost, in the dark," Legolas answered. "I had to find you, and I heard your song, calling to me. You were lost."

"Yes. Yes, I was lost."

"And I found you."

"You did. You always do."

"Why do you cry? I found you. All is well."

"Yes." And Estel still cried, but he smiled to, so Legolas had to be satisfied with that. He turned his attention again to the two wizards.

"As it so happened," Mithrandir said, continuing the tale, "the Lady Galadriel saw your fall and told me of your need of aid. I arrived with fresh supplies. As the poison that ailed you was beyond my knowledge, I thought to bring you to a friend of mine who has a great affinity with growing things. By chance, his home was also quite nearby. This is Saruman the White, the greatest wizard of our order."

The unknown man bowed his head slightly, a gentle smile softening what would otherwise have been quite stern features.

"You were quite far gone, child," the wizard said, his voice, like his face, stern but kind. "But I have friends in the forest who gifted me a restorative draught that I don't doubt could bring life even to stone. Your hurts were great, but the bonds of love aided you, the draught restored you, and I believe you shall yet live."

"Then I thank you for your aid," Legolas said.

"I am glad I had such power," Saruman replied, before turning to Estel. "Now, young ranger, you see your friend awake, and doing as well as could be expected after such a fall. Let me see to that arm. I believe it may need to be bled to be healed."

"You already bled me enough when we arrived," Estel protested, "I am well." Legolas frowned at the obvious lie and squeezed Estel's hand.

"I can see it is inflamed from here," he said. "Do not neglect yourself for my sake."

The next time Legolas slept, he did not slip back into the darkness but into a deep and healing sleep and when he awoke, he was stronger than before. It was still slow progress, far slower than he cared for, and he never could remember the fall that Estel spoke of. Estel suggested it was due to hitting his head quite hard that his memories were lost.

"I don't think they are lost," Legolas answered, frowning, one hand cupped around the remains of his torn ear. He found himself touching it often, disconcerted that a piece of him was now missing. Ears do not grow back, not even for immortal elves, though he, like his father, did possess enough innate power to create an illusion of wholeness. Not yet; all his power was now going into his own healing, but soon.

"What do you mean?" Estel demanded, his voice surprisingly urgent. "Do you remember something?"

"No," Legolas answered, forcing himself to leave his ear alone. "But I can feel them. It is as though there is a wall there that I cannot pass."

"Well," Estel said, after considering this for a moment. "Perhaps that is for the best. They would be very painful memories."

"All the same, I wish I could remember," Legolas answered. "They might be painful, but the memories are mine."

"Very painful," Estel pointed out, and that dark look entered his eyes once more, a look Legolas hated. It was full of pain and sorrow and guilt. The memories that Legolas didn't have weighed on the man. Legolas wished for his memories if only so he could share the weight. He could not, so instead he chose words that he hoped would lighten the burden he saw in his friends eyes.

"And besides that, I saved you. Again. You said as much. How am I to keep count of all the times I save you if I can't remember doing it?"

Estel smiled, just as Legolas hoped he would.

"I suppose you'll just have to trust my word on the matter. You did save me."

"You were lost," Legolas insisted, and without his memory he couldn't say why, but the words felt true. "I found you."

And Legolas healed, and Estel healed, though Saruman had to drain his wound many times before the infection released its hold, and the wizards conferred on wizardly matters, until Legolas was once more hale enough to complete the journey to Imladris as they had started out to do.

And if Legolas did not feel completely right or whole, if some sickness left over from the briars affected him still, he felt well enough. He had his friend at his side, and the bright sun over his head and the song of the earth around him. Time, he was certain, would eventually heal whatever small wounds remained.

He was well enough.


End file.
